Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight...

Have you noticed that none of the industry analysts that blog have written anything thoughtful on the Microsoft Enterprise Architecture Toolkit?



In something of a quiet and unheralded moment to all other than folks interested in true Enterprise Architecture, Mike Walker, made a pretty big announcement regarding the Enterprise Architecture Toolkit Alpha”.

The Toolkit is essentially a Solution Accelerator, or a package of tools, documentation, and framework elements to jumpstart people in establishing Enterprise Architecture and it’s traditional components. Capabilities include: (as per Mike’s blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2008/04/14/japan-strategic-architecture-forum-day-2.aspx)

• Repository - Meta-data repository for uniting enterprise processes, storing existing architecture assets and a catalog for patterns (Software Factories in Microsoft terms or Architecture Building Blocks (ABB) in TOGAF ADM terms)
• Architecture Management - Portal and Workflow assets that aid in the processes and govern architecture creation through the SDLC or through post production service management processes.
• Strategy Management - Portal and Workflow that aid in the creation of as-is or current state architecture, to-be or future state architectures and the management of technology life cycles of architectures.
• Community - Portal technologies that aid in the communication and collaboration, vetting of ideals through-out the enterprise, communication of Principles, Policies, Standards and Design Patterns, Add-Ins and Templates for architecture development.
• Modeling - Usage scenarios for how to leverage Microsoft Visio to correlate architecture information from the Architecture Meta-Data Repository to Visio diagrams and shapes.
  

Not that any industry analyst will attempt to actually compare it with Troux or other EA tools, but it would be interesting for them to at least mention the benefits of such an approach as many EA organizations don't actually use EA tools. More importantly, I would be excited if one of them didn't compare this with commercial offerings and otherwise over-hyped theoretical features that are missing but instead figured out when an EA tool is good enough...